


love like winter

by sepiacigarettes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22130413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiacigarettes/pseuds/sepiacigarettes
Summary: It’s been a lifetime of travelling across the universe, of burning in the heat of the desert, melting in the humidity of the tropics, being floored at the sight of the supernovas, slipping in the ice sludge of the city, and yet nothing could have prepared Keith for snow.Keith reflects on the weather of his memories.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 142





	love like winter

**Author's Note:**

> For [Fiz](https://twitter.com/fizaxon).
> 
> Happy holigays! I got you for the Sheith Secret Santa. Thank you for the prompts—I hemmed and hawwed between the first two before deciding on this one.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! 💖

> Warn your warmth to turn away
> 
> Here, it's December
> 
> Everyday
> 
> Press your lips to the sculptures
> 
> And surely you'll stay
> 
> Love like winter
> 
> For of sugar and ice
> 
> I am made
> 
> It's in the blood
> 
> I met my love before I was born
> 
> He wanted love
> 
> I taste of blood
> 
> He bit my lip, and drank my warmth
> 
> From years before
> 
> — AFI, _Love Like Winter_

—

Keith remembers the rain, when the heat of the desert was quelled, the sky overcome with clouds. It would pour down all day, and Keith would sit on the verandah with his pop, eating corn and licking the melted butter off his fingers.

—

Keith remembers the sandstorms they used to get, the billowing dust clouds hurtling across the desert. The first time one came, he couldn’t have been any older than ten, lying in bed and nestled against his pop’s chest, listening to him hum a tune as the sky turned orange with the onslaught. They ate meat pies and watched an old movie over the loud rattling shutters of their shack, and Keith fell asleep listening to the wind howling outside.

—

His first firestorm still hurts.

They all told his pop not to go back into that building.

Keith wishes he’d listened.

—

His first meteor shower was a beautiful one. He was seventeen, sitting in the dust with his best friend and letting him talk as the stars flew overhead. The heat of the day was long gone by now, replaced by the swift coolth of the desert at nighttime. His best friend pointed to which one he was travelling to in the coming weeks, and Keith had swallowed down the bile at the reminder that the next year was going to be spent on his own again. They raced each other back to the Garrison and Keith hugged his best friend as tight as he could.

—

His first metallic storm was an adrenaline-filled one. He was eighteen, crouched over in his pilot’s chair in pain because the latest hit to Red had slammed him against his armrest. The others were screaming at each other over the comms but all that mattered was getting rid of Zarkon. Afterwards, when it was over, when Keith still smelt like electricity and burning scaultrite, Shiro rested his forehead on his shoulder and sighed out, long and slow. They didn’t say anything to each other, but they didn’t need to. Keith was tired, and Shiro was his best friend, and he still felt like home.

—

When Keith was nineteen, he watched the birth of a galaxy on the space whale with his mom. She was busy trying to teach him how to get the Galra guttural ‘h’ sound when Keith saw the starburst from the corner of his eye. It was a busy little thing, constantly flashing as new planets and stars were formed. Krolia had paused her lesson and waited it out, and then she turned to him, eyes soft.

“I remember the first time I saw a galaxy being born,” she said. “It’s like nothing else.”

And she was right, and it made Keith miss Shiro more than ever, how he wasn’t there to share it with him.

—

He was twenty when he watched his first sunrise on an asteroid in the Solar System instead of back on Earth. Shiro was sitting next to him while the others were fast asleep in their Lions, both of them having taken the night shift. He was tired, and he knew Shiro was exhausted, but Shiro refused when Keith told him to go to bed.

“I want to stay with you,” Shiro said in a quiet voice, and then he shuffled closer to Keith, and Keith let him, because he hadn’t sat with Shiro like that in two years.

The atmosphere was lighter here, but Keith thought even if it was normal, then he’d still be breathless by the way Shiro hovered in his space.

“How’s your wound?” Shiro asked him, and it made Keith think of another time they were like that, when Shiro was hurt and Black allowed Keith to pilot her for the first time.

But that was different, back then. Back then, they didn’t have their nightmares and the shock of it all weighing down on them like a shroud. Back then, Shiro’s wound wasn’t Keith’s fault.

So he said, “It’s okay,” which was a shallow truth, because it still stung despite the medical attention Pidge gave to it, but it didn’t matter. Shiro was sitting next to him, alive, breathing, looking like himself again. Keith wouldn’t have traded that for the world.

“I’m so sorry,” Shiro said in a small voice, and Keith shook his head. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t,” Keith said, fighting to keep his voice steady, even though his heart felt like it was trying to claw its way up his throat. “It’s good to have you back.”

Shiro’s eyes watered, and in the oncoming dawn, the grey of them shone. “It’s good to be back.”

—

Keith was twenty-one when he watched New Altea’s first sunset after the war. It was an absolutely stunning one, full of pinks and golds and oranges that Keith didn’t have words for. Waxing lyrical had always been Lance’s strongpoint. Math was Pidge’s. Cooking was Hunk’s. Singing was Allura’s.

Shiro’s was always knowing exactly what to say to make Keith feel at peace, and now was no different. The Lions and Atlas were parked on a cliff overlooking the beach.

“We did it,” Keith said softly, wondering.

Warmth from the sun blanketed him, heating his cheeks, making his eyes water. Below them on top of Yellow, Pidge was curled up with Allura and Hunk, while Lance held a sobbing Coran. Various crews from the Atlas were walking along the sand with Alteans and Marmorans and Balmerans, celebrating.

“We did it,” Shiro said, and he was looking at Keith like he always did, except it was only now that Keith decided _fuck it,_ to not let fear or overthinking stop him, because the war was over, the Universe was safe, they were sitting on a newborn planet with the prettiest sunset Keith had seen, and yet Shiro was looking at Keith like he was the only thing that mattered.

And so he leant in, while the sunrays painted Shiro’s beautiful face in gold, a colour that Shiro _belonged_ in, and pressed his very first kiss to the corner of Shiro’s mouth.

 _“Keith,”_ Shiro gasped, shocked, and Keith blurted out, “I love you, Shiro,” and then he was reminded of how Shiro was always so quick to show emotion around Keith, because he looked like he was going to cry.

But there they were, at the end of everything, at the beginning of something new, and Keith loved Shiro with everything he was. There was nothing left but Shiro.

And Shiro understood, because he nodded and said, “God, I love you too,” and then tangled his hands in Keith’s hair and kissed back.

—

Keith was twenty-two when he saw ice sludge for the first time. Tokyo’s crunched under his feet and Keith allowed himself to be distracted by it as Shiro pulled them through the crowd, hand clasped tightly in Keith’s. It was years since Keith lived in the desert and yet it was like he was still conditioned to it, because the coolth of Tokyo city was seeping steadily through his jacket and threatening to go deeper into his bones.

“You okay?” Shiro asked him, arm coming around Keith’s shoulders to rub some life into them.

“It’s so cold,” Keith shivered, wishing he’d had the foresight to wear more layers. Three seemed like overkill when he’d put them on, but at that moment, four layers seemed like a fantastic idea.

“It’s winter, baby,” Shiro said, smiling down at him, and god, that did something to Keith’s heart, made it flip over in his ribcage and squeeze tightly. “It’s supposed to be cold.”

“I know,” Keith grumbled, cheeks aching from the smile that had crept onto his face when he was looking up at Shiro, and then he scuffed the ground with his boot. “Is it always crunchy?”

Shiro looked at Keith’s feet. “The snow? No. In the city, yeah, because it gets shovelled. It’ll be softer where we’re going.”

Keith leaned a little more against Shiro. It had been over a year since the war ended, months since Allura and Lance announced their engagement and Shay moved from the Balmera to live with Hunk. Pidge and her brother were having a field day with combining Olkari and Altean technology, and Coran spent his time with Merla helping Allura rule New Altea.

It was all a little perfect, and yet at the same time it wasn’t.

Shiro still woke up from time to time with nightmares, and Pidge still hadn’t lost the gauntness the war gave her, and Hunk still struggled with panic attacks. Keith still had difficulty sparring properly with Shiro, and Lance still had his guilt over Kuron. Allura still cried for her father, for Lotor, for all the Alteans who didn’t make it.

Sometimes it made Keith angry that the war did that to them. Other times it just made him tired.

But at that moment, it was a good time. At that moment, his hand was tangled with Shiro’s and they were walking through Shiro’s homeland on their way to their first hotel before they drove to Nagano in the morning.

It was Shiro’s idea, to return to where he was born.

“Just us,” Shiro told him one night as their heartbeats calmed down and their skin cooled. His fingers drifted over Keith’s spine and the touch had felt like healing, like dipping into a pool of liquid gold. “I want to show you where I grew up. I want to show you the snow.”

Saying no to Shiro was never an option for Keith. Never.

He’d followed Shiro to the end of the Universe without hesitation. He would do it all over again in a instant.

Besides, there was something charming about seeing Shiro slip back into his mother tongue as they navigated their way around the city. Keith let Shiro take the lead, caught up in the glowing lights and the crowds and the organisation of it all while the sludge wet his boots and slushed with each step.

Later that night, Shiro curled around him. The cold had stayed outside, but Keith couldn’t get warm; the katsu they had for dinner tried its best, and so did the several beers they ordered, but cushioned in Shiro’s arms, it was only then that he felt like a candle was finally lit inside him, thawing him out.

Shiro hummed happily as Keith melted into the bed, and he pressed a kiss to his cheek before sighing out sleepily, “You’re the best part of me, Keith.”

—

It’s been a lifetime of travelling across the universe, of burning in the heat of the desert, melting in the humidity of the tropics, being floored at the sight of the supernovas, slipping in the ice sludge of the city, and yet nothing could have prepared Keith for snow.

It dots his eyelashes, falls upon his cheeks, melts between his fingertips. He cups a ball of it in his hands and wades through the powdery softness to get closer to Shiro, who is looking at Keith like he’s never seen anything better.

“What do you think?” Shiro asks him when he’s close enough.

Keith wrinkles his nose, cold enough that it feels like it might freeze off, breath puffing into the air in front of him. “It’s so weird,” he says honestly, mashing it between his palms.

The snow is on Shiro too, and Keith takes a moment to admire how good Shiro looks wearing his grey beanie, before he kisses a snowflake from his lips.

“I know, baby.” Hands, warm like a furnace, grasp Keith’s face, shield his ears. “But do you _like_ it?”

Keith likes a lot of things. He likes how big Shiro’s hands are, how Shiro looks limned in the light from the ryokan. He likes Shiro’s heated kisses in the morning, and his sleepy ones at night. He likes listening to Shiro talk about their found family back on New Altea, and the star systems they’ve visited. He likes how Shiro lets Keith take care of him, and he likes how Shiro makes him laugh.

“I don’t hate it,” he says honestly.

Shiro’s smile—always present around Keith—grows bigger, and he leans down to brush their noses together. Keith’s has gone numb by this point, so the effect Shiro was probably going for is slightly ruined, and yet Keith’s heart does another hopeless flip.

“That’s not an answer,” he sing-songs, and Keith loves this infuriating man, he really does.

It’s never been anyone else but Shiro. Always Shiro.

“I don’t hate it,” Keith repeats instead of giving into Shiro’s tease, and then he turns and runs.

Keith is fast, quick and agile and used to being the fastest in the room, but the snow is soft as a cloud beneath him, yielding too easily to his footsteps as he attempts to sprint away. Shiro is bigger and more used to navigating the terrain, so Keith doesn’t manage to get very far before an arm hooks around his waist and pushes him down.

“Not so fast,” Shiro says, pinning Keith beneath him.

He must look like a mess like this, Keith thinks, sprawled out in the snow. Flakes are still clinging to his eyelashes and his entire face feels like it’s been dipped into an ice bath and freeze dried. But Shiro’s eyes soften, the way they always do before he’s about to say something romantic to Keith, and Keith holds his breath, nervous.

“You’re everything,” Shiro murmurs. “You know that, right?”

The ground is a wall of _cold_ underneath Keith’s back, his hair already getting wet as the snow melts around them, but Shiro doesn’t shift.

“It’s always been you,” Keith says just as softly, as the chill makes it past the first layer, as his nose reddens further from the wind.

Later, they’ll go inside and warm up with each other in the onsen, and in the morning they’re hiking up to see the snow monkeys.

But for now, Keith is happy to stay there, almost imprinted into the snow, his best friend hovering over him and dotting kisses all over his numb face.

He’ll always remember this.

**Author's Note:**

> Bug me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/sepiacigarettes)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] love like winter by sepiacigarettes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157017) by [taikodragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taikodragon/pseuds/taikodragon)




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